I just absolutely LOVE Jon Acuff's blog. He is one of my most favoritest bloggers anywhere out there in the blogosphere. He had a really good one a couple of days ago and I have been thinking about it this morning. He wrote about what he called Grace Spots. Here is the link if you haven't read it Grace Spots. So his theory is that there are certain places we go everyday where the people need extra Grace. You know the people you can just bet have had a hard day and no one is being nice to them. The opposite in fact, people are probably being pretty mean to them and by taking a moment and showing them some Grace we can help make a difference in their day.
I love this idea and I am going to work on my own list of my own personal Grace Spots. Here are a few of mine:
Customer Service people on the phone- For some reason I will get snippy with customer service people on the phone when I would never think of being that snippy in person. It is like because they far away and I can't see them I don't have to think about the fact that they are real people with real feelings.
Teenagers just starting a job- Twice in the last month I have gone into a fast food place to eat and the girl behind the order counter was young, new, and scared. Remember what it felt like to be 16 and have your first job. Remember what it felt like to be overwhelmed by it all? Now imagine having and adult be mean and rude and nasty to you. Nope not a chance. I want to be that person who says "it's cool, take your time, you are doing a great job!"
People who drive like 20 miles an hour down my road- I am not a road rage kinda person. I actually tend to drive a little slow. So maybe I am the kind of person who causes others to have road rage instead LOL. However, people who drive 20 down my road make me nuts! We live in a small neighborhood/community outside of town. There is one way in and one way out. We are 4 1/2 miles down that road. The speed limit is faster than 20 all 4 1/2 miles! If I am leaving the house I probably running late. If I am hading home I am eager to get there. Either way 20 is tooooo slow. Truth is though this road is REALLY curvy. I remember when I first moved here I was scared to death of the winding road with deep ditches on each side. I need to show these slow moving people some grace. And maybe leave 10 minutes earlier.
People who work at summer tourist spots- We get a lot of out-of-towners around here. Especially over in Williamsburg. They can make life hard on the locals.
Our school board- This has been a rough year for our local school board. We have faced major budget cuts like most other school have. They decided to try a thing where we would go less days to save money. It wasn't popular but it saved teachers jobs. Then we had the tornado that took out one of the two local middle schools. They had schedule changes, stuff to replace, a mess to clean up, and a board of supervisors to deal with. Now we are on to next year. The have a solution for the next few years as the middle school is rebuilt. Do I like it? Nope don't care for the plan too much. I am I glad I wasn't the one who had to fix this mess? You had better believe it. I might not like the solution but it is what we got. I am sure they feel it is the best one available. I know a lot of people aren't happy about it. They are doing the best they can. Let's show our school board some Grace!
These are just the ones who popped in to my head at this moment. I am going to pray about this and really see what I can come up with. Showing someone that is having a bad day some extra kindness, extending Grace to them could really change their day. I know I have had days when a few kind words would have been really welcome.
So where are your Grace Spots?
I have the same issue with customer service. I think it's because I worked customer service for 2 years. "Hello, welcome to Plow and Harth, how can I help you" I had rude people. But I had really nice people. I also was really good at my job, I would fix the problem, if I couldn't I'd find some way to compensate them. Also, they could understand me. I know it's not people from India's fault that they have an accent, however, if you are working for a company that is helping English speaking customers, you really should be able to be understood. I also hate bad customer service. I finally snapped after being on hold and transferred for almost two hours because I didn't get what I had already paid for. They kept saying "I understand" I finally shouted. "I don't think you do understand, if you did you would have fixed it instead of transferring me to 6 different people." I felt bad, but only a little. She was really annoying. .
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